The Sky Weaver

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Safire opened her mouth to defend her soldats. But Eris was right: they were an army, not a navy.

  “Listen.” Eris set down Safire’s knife. “That wasn’t an empty threat back there. I’ve seen Jemsin cut up men with my own eyes, piece by piece.”

  Safire didn’t care. All she cared about was that Jemsin never find out where Asha was.

  And yet, if she didn’t give them something, she would be used as bait to lure her cousin into a trap.

  “What will he do to her?” she asked.

  Eris’s eyes brightened, excited that Safire was beginning to play her game. She leaned back, gripping the table behind her, and pushed herself up onto it, letting her legs swing free. “Jemsin doesn’t kidnap people for no reason. So either she did something to provoke him, or she’s valuable to someone.”

  As far as Safire knew, Asha had never had a run-in with a pirate. But if it was the latter, who would she be valuable to? She was no longer a fugitive. After the law against regicide was struck down, Asha was pardoned for killing her father, the former dragon king. There was no longer a bounty on her head.

  “If she’s valuable to someone, he’ll keep her alive,” Eris went on. Pulling her feet up onto the table, she rested her arms on her knees and leaned forward. “You, however, are in far greater danger. If you don’t talk, he won’t hesitate to cut you up. And I very much doubt your cousin wants you dead. More important, you’ll be no use to her dead.”

  Why do you care? Safire thought back to the conversation she overheard from the crawl space. Jemsin had offered Eris freedom in exchange for the Namsara. Which didn’t make sense to Safire. Eris was the legendary Death Dancer. What kept her—a girl who could walk through walls and disappear at will—tied to the pirate captain?

  Safire discarded the question. It didn’t matter right now.

  “Assuming I do know where she is, what’s to stop you from killing me as soon as I tell you?” asked Safire, having no intention of ever doing such a thing.

  Eris rolled her eyes. As if she couldn’t believe what a novice Safire was. “The only person who’ll kill you is Jemsin. And that’s if you give him bad information.” She gave Safire a hard look of warning. “I don’t kill people.”

  “No,” said Safire darkly, remembering the barrels of water. “You only torture them.”

  Eris raised her hands innocently. “I saved you a bundle of pain today. Jemsin’s crew is far less kind in their methods.”

  Was she suggesting her methods were kind? Unbelievable.

  “I answered two of your questions,” said Eris, voice hardening. “It’s time you answered one of mine. Where’s the Namsara?”

  Safire looked away, thinking of that barrel of water. Of the building panic and the moment before she was certain her lungs would burst. She couldn’t go through that again. She needed to give Eris something. So she said, very softly, “Asha’s on her way to Firefall.”

  Eris went very still, her eyes fixing on Safire’s. “I’m not sure I heard you.”

  There was an edge in her voice. A warning not to lie.

  So Safire turned her face and held that green-eyed gaze, ignoring the sweat collecting at the back of her neck. “My cousin is flying to Firefall. It’s a city west of Darmoor, ruled by—”

  “I know what it is,” said Eris. “Are you telling the truth?”

  The truth was that Asha returned from Firefall a few weeks ago.

  “She’s building a school,” Safire went on, burying her lie beneath fact. “A school she hopes will preserve the old stories and restore the severed link between draksors and dragons. Firefall’s library has one of the oldest and biggest collections of old stories in existence. Asha’s gone there to collect them and bring them back.”

  Except for the fact that this had already happened, it was all true.

  Finally, Eris stopped scrutinizing her. Tucking Safire’s knife into her belt, the girl rose to her feet.

  She moved toward Safire, who immediately tensed and flicked the blade out from the toe of her boot. Eris glanced down, visibly wincing at the memory of its sharpened tip driving into her shin.

  “Try it again,” said Eris, “and I’ll take those boots right off your feet.”

  Safire went still. Her picklocks were hidden in her left boot. She’d need them if she had any hope of escaping these manacles. So, obediently, she flicked the blade back in and let the girl approach.

  Eris studied her. Safire studied her back.

  She was startlingly pretty, this girl. Pretty and graceful.

  Eris reached for her chin. Safire’s skin scorched at her touch and she jerked her face away.

  Those green eyes narrowed, but Eris’s voice was soft as she said, “Who hurt you?”

  “What?” Safire breathed.

  “Anyone can see you’re afraid to be touched.”

  This wasn’t exactly true. Safire just wasn’t used to people touching her. She’d spent most of her life without physical contact on account of her mother’s skral blood running through her veins.

  Before Dax became king and changed everything—freeing the skral and abolishing the unjust laws that governed them—the only time anyone ever touched Safire was to injure or punish her. So now, something as little as the brush of a hand, if it came from someone she didn’t know or wasn’t comfortable with, could hit her with the force of a lightning strike.

  “Who hurt you?” Eris asked again.

  Safire thought of the night of the revolt. Of the knife she put in Jarek’s heart. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “He’s dead.”

  Eris’s mouth turned down at those words and she stepped warily back.

  “Well then,” she said, studying Safire like she was some kind of puzzle. Turning, she headed for the door. Before she opened it and stepped through, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Remy is just down this hall. So don’t try anything.”

  The way she said it was less of a threat, more like a genuine warning.

  The door shut, locking Safire in with only the lamp, its flame burning low. Safire listened to the lock click into place. Listened to the footsteps disappear down the hall.

  Her stomach growled in the silence, making her realize she hadn’t eaten since before she’d followed Eris into the Thirsty Craw.

  Safire waited several moments more. When she was certain Eris was gone, she pulled her leg up so her bound hands could reach inside her boot. It took her a few tries, but her fingers finally reached the hidden flap between the leather and her calf, freeing the lockpicks there.

  With her hands bound, it took longer than usual to get the manacles unlocked. But as soon as they clicked open, Safire moved through the dimly lit room toward the table. Carefully, she reached for the lamp, turning the thumb wheel until the low flame burned brighter, giving her more light to see by. She then began to inspect the room.

  First, she searched for her knives, looking in drawers and between folded trousers and shirts. Her fingers meticulously traced the floorboards and clapboard walls, trying to find secret compartments.

  When it became clear there were no weapons in this room, she looked for something that could be used as a weapon. But all she found was a rusted directional compass in one of the drawers. She pocketed it.

  Where do you keep your secrets? she wondered, thinking of the thief with the moon-pale hair. It seemed unnatural for someone’s room to contain no trace of their identity.

  Thinking of the night the Death Dancer walked into Safire’s own room and stole her throwing knife, she approached the bed, which was little more than a lumpy mattress on a roughly hewn wooden frame. Reaching beneath the pillows, she found a plain wooden spindle there. Drawing it out, she ran her thumb over its smooth curves wonderingly.

  Suddenly, footsteps thudded in the hall.

  Safire’s gaze shot to the door, her heart thundering. Had someone heard her? Seen the light from the lamp?

  Before she was caught in the act, Safire put the spindle back, turned dow
n the lamp’s flame, and returned to her manacles, closing them around her wrists.

  But the footsteps came and went.

  The door never opened.

  Safire ground her heel against the wall, the chains of her manacles clinking as she did. She closed her eyes, trying to think of what to do.

  Asha would surely be at the scrin by now, oblivious to the danger coming for her. Dax and Roa would be fully panicked at Safire’s absence. If they tried to pursue Jemsin’s ship—as she knew they would—it would delay their arrival in the Star Isles. Not a good start to their alliance with its empress.

  She needed to escape, track down Asha, and warn her. She and Asha could then find Dax and together they could inform the empress about the pirates trawling her waters. The empress, Safire was certain, would send her navy after this ship and sink it to the bottom of the sea.

  Safire had a compass in her pocket. She knew the Star Isles were northwest of Darmoor.

  All she needed was a boat to get her there.

  Yearning

  The fisherman’s daughter was seventeen the next time she saw him. She was down on the shore, scraping barnacles off the hull of her father’s boat when she felt a ripple in the air, as if someone had just stepped into this world from another.

  What world he came from, she could hardly guess. When he was here, though, he seemed to hover at the edge of things. Sometimes a man, sometimes a shadow.

  She set down her scraper and listened.

  The wind stung her cheeks. The gulls screamed over the water. The sea spirits had all disappeared from the craggy rocks below the cliffs and gone to calmer waters.

  A storm was coming.

  Casting her gaze into the junipers, the girl saw no one. Back and forth went her good eye, between the trees. She was just about to turn and quickly finish her task when she saw it—a black shadow—between the jagged gray rocks.

  Crow. Dark like the deepest part of the woods and insubstantial as a ghost.

  “Are you a ghost?” she asked quietly, putting a voice to her thoughts as she went back to scraping barnacles.

  “No” came his voice loud and clear as a bell. Right beside her.

  The girl shivered. But not out of fear.

  “What, then?” she asked, still focused on her work. “Not a man.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  His response surprised her so much she slipped and cut herself with the scraper.

  Blood welled up. She dropped the blade into the sand and stared at the crimson shine blooming across her palm.

  He breathed her name. His solid form disappeared as darkness swelled around her, enclosing her in a cocoon of night.

  Where a moment ago there was pain, now there was . . . nothing. The sting in her hand extinguished like a snuffed flame.

  The wind roared in her ears once more. The gulls and the sea returned.

  She stared at her palm. The blood was gone. The skin was split no longer, and in its place was a thin, tidy scar.

  Looking up, she found him solid before her. He stood close enough to touch.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  A pleased smile tugged at his normally stern mouth. The sight of it made something unfurl within her.

  Her pulse quickened. She studied those clear black eyes. Deep as the sea. In all their years of friendship—Was that what this was? Was he her friend?—she’d never touched him.

  How she longed to.

  But the moment she lifted her fingers to his face, he stepped back. Startled.

  She insisted, pushing away from the boat. She touched his cheek, her skin heating at the contact. She stared at him, her good fierce eye searching both of his.

  They were so close now. Her fingers slid behind his neck.

  His eyes were wild and unsure, his breath unsteady.

  She pulled his face gently down to hers, coaxing him to her.

  Before their lips touched, her father yelled her name, calling her in from the storm.

  Crow jerked away, his voice tight. “We can’t do this. You don’t realize what I am.”

  He was melting away from her. Back into shadow. Out of her reach.

  Skye took a step toward him. “I don’t care.”

  “You should.”

  She let out an angry breath. “What are you, then?”

  “Nothing good,” he whispered.

  And then he was gone.

  The girl fell against the hull of her father’s boat, feeling colder than the sea.

  Ten

  After using the spindle to draw a shining line, the mists rose up. Eris stepped into them and across.

  Her footsteps echoed loudly as she waded through the white fog and down the path beneath the stars. A few moments later, an arching blue door with a silver handle stood before her. Opening it, she stepped into the eerie quiet of the labyrinth. The spindle always brought her to this same place—a place between worlds. A place Day had showed her how to use when she was just a child. A place to hide, he’d told her back then.

  No sooner had Eris started down its stained-glass halls than she felt the eerie presence of the ghost, following her. Out of habit, she ran her thumb over the familiar curves and grooves of her spindle. When she was younger, she liked to imagine the spindle as a kind of talisman, protecting her from the ghost in the labyrinth. But years of crossing had taught her the thing was harmless. The ghost loved to lurk, which was creepy enough, but it never tried to hurt her.

  She started ignoring it, then forgetting it was there.

  “Looks like we have a long night of sleuthing ahead of us,” she said to the ghost now, making her way toward one of the doors within. She needed to always pay attention to the path she took, otherwise the labyrinth would turn her about, ensnaring her inside itself for hours, or sending her straight back to where she’d started.

  The ghost said nothing. But Eris knew it heard her.

  At present, there were four doors, each one leading to a different place. The first and most-used door led to the Sea Mistress, Kor’s now-burned vessel; the second led to the Hyacinth; the third and newest door led to Firgaard’s palace; and the last stood before her. Painted gold with a brass handle, this one led to Firefall—a wealthy seaside city where Jemsin sent Eris for most of her jobs. A city that just so happened to be crawling with the empress’s spies.

  She’d nearly destroyed this door after her last visit, months ago now, when she’d been caught mid-heist by four Lumina soldiers. Before she could even draw her spindle, they were on her, locking her hands in stardust steel cuffs—a form of torture the Lumina were best known for. Not only would the corrosive metal eat right through human wrists, but for some reason, it prevented Eris from stepping across.

  She discovered this when they threw her into a temporary holding cell before shipping her back to the Star Isles. With her hands bound in the stardust steel cuffs, Eris tried to use the spindle . . . but nothing happened. If Jemsin hadn’t found her, hadn’t slaughtered them all, she’d be in the empress’s hands right now. Or dead.

  She shivered at the thought.

  But Jemsin wasn’t going to stop sending her to Firefall because of a close encounter with some soldiers. If she destroyed the golden door, she’d only have to make a new one. And in order for these doors to open into a place she needed to go, Eris had to fasten them out of something belonging to that particular place. It had taken her months to obtain the material she needed to make this door—which lead straight into Firefall’s royal archives.

  So she’d kept it, and was thankful now for her own foresight. Tapping the stolen knife in her belt, she thought of the information Safire gave her.

  “Let’s see if she’s a liar, shall we?” she said to the ghost.

  The ghost said nothing back.

  Eris reached for the knob, pulled the door open, and stepped through.

  A Place of Her Own

  One evening, Crow heard Skye weeping. He tried to unhear it. Tried to stay away. But the sound of her sorrow was
a hook caught inside him. It tugged and it pulled until he gave in.

  He found her hiding in the rocks, just out of view of the wharf, and he sat down next to her.

  Skye lifted her red, chapped hands to show him. “They hurt,” she said. “But Papa needs me on the boats and the flakes. And Mama needs me for the washing and the cooking.” She stared miserably at her fingers, then looked up at him through eyes full of tears. “What I would give for just one day of quiet and stillness and rest. One day alone at my loom.”

  Crow could give her more than just one day.

  So he set to work, building a place for her. A secret place, between her world and his. Where she could weave, alone, in silence. He made her a loom. He filled baskets brimming with brightly colored skeins so that she would never run out of thread.

  He made doors that would help her get from place to place—the wharf, the house, the cliffs, the market—to give her time to rest.

  And then he fastened for her a key. One he disguised as a spindle. “You can hide it among your tools,” he said.

  Skye came to her secret loom often, and it brought Crow joy to watch her weave. To see the look of peace on her face as her fingers worked the threads. To see the way her mouth curved when she finished. He had given her a good gift. And the knowledge of it made a brand-new feeling glow within him.

  Happiness.

  And though he sometimes saw the hunger in her gaze when she looked at him, sometimes felt his own wanting chewing at his insides, for a time, it was enough.

  Eleven

  When the door swung open, Safire jolted upright in her chains. Eris stood in the frame. Her face seemed wan and thin, her mouth set in a hard line, and her shoulders drooped with exhaustion. As if she’d walked a hundred leagues in a day.

  But they were in the middle of the sea, so that was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  In one hand she held a covered platter; in the other, a goblet of wine. She set both on the table, on top of the map, a few feet away from Safire. Rubbing her hand over her face, she lit the lamps, then closed the door.